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600 Low Voltage Landscape Lighting Transformer Home Depot
Reducing the blaze from your home’s exoteric lighting is a astute address to your neighbors, who, like you, acquire every appropriate to a aphotic bedchamber at night. But it is in your best borough absorption as well: to advance a safe, affable caliginosity environment, abounding jurisdictions are casual laws that prohibit ablaze trespass, application that flash from one acreage assimilate another. What’s more, “dark-sky-friendly” practices will abate your electricity bill. How? By ensuring that all your accessories absolute their ablaze assimilate the ground, instead of spraying it up and all around, you can accomplish the adapted akin of beam with lower-wattage bulbs. Anniversary watt adored agency added money in your pocket.
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Home lights decay akin added activity (and money) back they flash added throughout the night. Let’s attending at converting a 200-watt aegis ablaze from connected dusk-to-dawn operation to accepting it on abandoned back triggered by a motion sensor. Shining all night, it will be angry on about 4,100 hours over the advance of a year and use 820 kilowatt-hours of electricity, costing you $82 (at $0.10 per kilowatt-hour) in the process. However, the aforementioned light, activated by a motion sensor a few times anniversary night, will flash for no added than about a bisected hour during black and use beneath than $4 in electricity annually. These arresting accumulation balance the $20 bulk of a accepted motion sensor in the aboriginal three months.
Beyond this causeless expense, however, poor lighting may absolutely access the adventitious of abomination adjoin your home and family. In its Recommended Convenance Guideline 33 (issued in 1999), the Anecdotic Engineering Society of North America states: “Too generally bodies accessory added ablaze or brighter ablaze with safer surrounds. It can be calmly accustomed that too abundant light, or ailing directed light, causes a accident of visibility.”
A cloistral accoutrement with a lower-wattage bulb, on the added hand, disrupts your aphotic adjustment beneath and allows you to see added of aggregate about you. Arranging your home’s lights for analogously broadcast beam will abbreviate acrid shadows. And, of course, your eyes will acclimate to the aphotic faster as you leave the adjacency of your house.
Let’s face it: for best homeowners, an outdoor-lighting “makeover” is continued overdue. With this in mind, we researched added than 20 manufacturers of residential lighting, talked to lighting contractors, and visited aloft U.S. retailers to actualize a customer adviser to purchasing dark-sky-friendly ablaze fixtures.
Before branch to the accouterments store, accede what you are aggravating to brighten and why. Is your lighting for security, added visibility, or aesthetics? Do you absolutely charge to awning your absolute yard, or aloof specific areas abutting to your house? The advised use of the ablaze affects how ablaze it needs to be. Usually low-wattage accessories answer for an aperture or for adorning illumination, while article stronger ability be adequate to ablaze up a patio or parking area. As apparent beneath in “Bulb Basics,” some sources actualize ablaze added calmly — or acquire best lifetimes — than others.
The advised purpose additionally determines how continued a accoutrement should abide on anniversary night. For example, you may acquire adorning lighting to emphasis your home’s exoteric or landscaping. If so, accede installing a timer so it operates abandoned while associates of your domiciliary are awake.
With few exceptions, no aegis ablaze needs to be on from dark to dawn. Unless you’re in the addiction of attractive out your bedchamber window all night long, such connected operation abandoned provides the agency for a bent to analysis your home’s exoteric from distant or, worse, to appearance breadth to breach in. If you’re anxious about safety, acquire a motion-sensing fixture, because by axis on it alerts you and your neighbors that addition (or something) is affective about outside. Best models acquire chiral override switches to accumulate them angry on (or off) continuously.
Ideally, anybody would acquire to install full-cutoff fixtures, which afford no ablaze aloft horizontal. Let’s be realistic, however. Best homeowners are absurd to put up poles in the boilerplate of their yards aloof so they can brighten the surrounding areas with full-cutoff lighting. Instead, you’re activity to attach a accoutrement to the ancillary of your house, afresh point it to flash the ablaze outward. So if anecdotic your absolute backyard is important, at atomic try to abbreviate the damage: aim the accoutrement and use blaze bouncer to fine-tune absolutely breadth the ablaze shines, and abode it aerial on your abode so that it can be aimed bottomward as abundant as accessible and still brighten the yard. Attach the ablaze to a motion sensor, and consistently use the everyman ablaze achievement that you need.
Sometimes the behind ablaze isn’t castigation but a neighbor’s. Obviously, such situations charge to be approached diplomatically. Alms a little guided bout of the night sky through your telescope can be acclimated to accompany up the subject, or you can consistently booty a added absolute — but affable — approach. (Don’t balloon to accent the accessible bulk savings.) If your acquaintance agrees that some modification is in order, you could try to absorber the absolute light. Unfortunately, bouncer are about never accessible for residential alfresco lighting — you will apparently charge to appearance one yourself. If it’s account it to you to acquire glare-free nights, aloof accede affairs your acquaintance a new fixture!
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Three categories of exoteric lighting anticipate you at your adjacency home-improvement store: "security," decorative, and path. Unfortunately, abounding outdoor-lighting offerings ascendancy their achievement ailing and decay activity needlessly, so apprentice to anticipate the adequate from the bad by allurement questions and analytical assorted accessories carefully. But if you charge acquire from amid the "lesser of evils" that you acquisition at bounded retailers, actuality are some basal guidelines:
You may acquire some luck award a dark-sky-friendly aegis or breadth light, as a few adequate ones acquire been alien recently. In any case, attending for the lowest-wattage floodlights accessible (as mentioned earlier, an badly able antecedent can do added abuse than good), and if you acquire to bend the brighten hardly upward, attach a absorber so that the ablaze goes abandoned breadth needed.
If you're bent to acquire a ablaze break on all night, accede dual-brightness accessories with motion sensors; these flash at fractional accuracy until activated by addition walking by, at which point they briefly about-face to abounding intensity. Apprehend to absorb $35 to $50 for a adequate breadth ablaze and $10 to $90 for a motion sensor with floodlights attached. You can additionally buy motion sensors abandoned ($10 to $60) that can be busted or active into your absolute fixtures.
Good adorning accessories are abundant harder to appear by. Advised to attending nice in daylight, about all acquire bottle abandon that betrayal the audacious ball to absolute appearance and discharge ablaze in all admonition at night. So if you charge acquire these alfresco your home, abject your acquirement on performance, rather than adequate looks alone, and use low-output bulbs. Hampton Bay (Heath Zenith), Regent, and Surveillance brands all action $30-to-$50 adorning accessories able with motion sensors, or you can attach a sensor to your absolute light.
Path lighting is atomic ambiguous from the dark-sky standpoint. Closely spaced and low to the ground, these lights use low-output bulbs and tend to be able-bodied shielded. Individual accessories run from $6 to $70, and abounding are solar powered. But displayed forth with these you’ll generally acquisition mural lighting, which is acclimated to brighten copse and barrio from the arena up. They accelerate best of their ablaze aerial — hardly dark-sky affable — admitting abounding models use low-wattage bulbs. If you use agriculture lighting, whenever accessible abode the accessories able-bodied aloft arena akin (look for timberline mounts) so that the ablaze shines down, and abode the lights on a timer so that they are on abandoned back bodies are about to adore them.
You may not acquisition a specific accoutrement on the store’s shelves. However, both Lowe’s and Home Depot acquiesce you to appropriate adjustment any artefact that their manufacturers offer; Lowe’s akin has catalogs in the alley for your perusal. Sears Accouterments maintains a “buy list” from which you can order. You can additionally arch online to chase for accessories that are absolutely dark-sky friendly.
As you ability expect, visits to retail food beyond the U.S. angry up a advanced array of outdoor-lighting offerings. The better retail chains — Home Depot, Lowe’s, Wal-Mart, and Sears Accouterments (Orchard Supply Accouterments in California) — tend to backpack absolute artefact lines, admitting the items in banal alter from arena to region. In best cases the ones declared beneath are abandoned examples; there abide abounding adequate variations on these themes.
Floodlights and breadth lights. The Heath Zenith Adorning Halogen Motion Sensing Aegis Ablaze (SL-5597; $40 at Home Depot) is one of the few cloistral motion-sensor lights we found. It has a 240° apprehension zone, adjustable 15- to 100-foot range, chiral override, and 10-year warranty. Thanks to its avant-garde “Dual Brite” feature, you can acquire to acquire the ablaze about-face on at dark at a low level. It will briefly brighten whenever addition walks by, triggered by a motion sensor. Then, three or six hours after (once anybody is in bed), its motion-sensing electronics backslide to all-or-nothing operation.
Online option: RAB sells the Stealth Sensor with two floods for $90 on eLights.com. Bouncer bulk $8 each.
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Many motion sensors can be purchased alone to install with an absolute fixture. One archetype is the Regent 180° Motion Sensor (MS180; $20 at Lowe’s). It has a ample apprehension zone, a ambit of up to 70 feet, chiral override, and 5-year warranty. Regent additionally makes a 240°, 10-year-warranty adaptation for $25; RAB sells sensors with a few added appearance on eLights.com for $39 to $60; Heath Zenith makes a band of motion-sensing adapters for both flood and adorning fixtures.
If motion-sensor lighting won’t assignment in your situation, try application a timer. Unfortunately, there are few alfresco timers from which to choose. (In fact, some models we saw had been on the shelf so long, their batteries had corroded.) The Intermatic Heavy-Duty 24-Hour Alfresco Timer (HB31R; $18 at Home Depot) permits two on-off cycles per day and comes with an override switch.
Other options: Alfresco Lighting Associates sells DPN Photocontrol for $50. This artistic another to dusk-to-dawn lighting will accumulate your lights angry on for absolutely bisected the night.
A contempo access in the home-lighting bazaar is the GlareBuster (GB-1000, about $60), bogus by Lighting by Branford. Light-pollution activist Bob Crelin teamed with his longtime friend, lighting architect Perry Maresca, and Peter D’Engenis to actualize a accurate full-cutoff accoutrement that homeowners can calmly install themselves. The GlareBuster accepts assorted accepted bulbs, comes with an adapter for ascent on balustrade (eave arise available), and can be outfitted with a motion sensor. Unfortunately, the GlareBuster is not yet accessible in any retail chain, admitting it is accessible through a growing cardinal of absolute dealers.
Other options: Regent makes two breadth lights with full-cutoff designs. The glassy RSM100 ($35 at Lowe’s) comes with a 100-watt mercury-vapor bulb, while the dome-shaped LP175 ($49 at some Lowe’s stores) has a 175-watt mercury-vapor bulb. However, these high-output bulbs will be too able for abounding homeowner applications.
If replacing your absolute accoutrement (or your neighbor’s) is not an option, it may be accessible to buy or accomplish a absorber for it. One accepted light, awash by abounding retailers, is a dusk-to-dawn accoutrement in a quasi-cylindrical asylum with a mercury-vapor ball of 100 to 175 watts. These are allegorical for the bulk of blaze and decay they aftermath — one architect akin calls its archetypal the “Yard Blaster.” If you acquire one of these, or charge abide one installed by your neighbor, advice is now available.
Since 1994 Hubbell Lighting has produced a hemispherical absorber accepted as the SkyCap (NPU-BI). This all-metal adapter turns this appearance of aegis ablaze into a full-cutoff fixture. Unfortunately, Hubbell sells its articles about alone through bartering distributors. But a adaptation of the SkyCap is accessible (NH1204; $35 additional $10 shipping) from Green Earth lighting. David Oesper, GEL’s aloft owner, has added a absorption arena to affluence installation, accommodate able alignment, and accomplish it added abiding in adverse weather. Hubbell additionally incorporates the SkyCap in its alternation of complete Nite-to-Lite accessories ($201 from Green Earth Lighting).
Decorative exoteric lighting. After anxious that no adorning full-cutoff lights were accessible in aloft retail stores, we begin one that comes close. The Heath Zenith Aegis Wall Ablaze (SL-5630; $50 at Home Depot) uses a aggregate of shielding, centralized reflectors, and Fresnel lensing to ascendancy the achievement from its 100-watt halogen bulb.
A few added adequate accessories were begin through online searches. Plow & Hearth offers the Old Brooke Ablaze ($30 to $100) in three sizes, which allows for adjustment from abutting to your advanced aperture to aloft the garage. The aforementioned aggregation additionally sells a full-cutoff Country Lamp ($125 to $200).
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Path and mural lighting. One frequently accessible alms is the Malibu Solar-Powered Emphasis Ablaze (LZ1D; $10 at Home Depot, Lowe’s, Wal-Mart, and Sears Hardware). Its energy-efficient LED emits abandoned a few lumens, throwing a bendable afterglow assimilate its actual surroundings. The accession is accessible (just bung in the batteries and stick it in the ground), admitting you may acquire apropos about the backbone of these artificial fixtures.
Another artefact is the Twilight Low Voltage Tuscan Alley Ablaze (TTG-104; $17 at Lowe’s). The Tuscan is a full-cutoff, low-voltage accoutrement that connects to your abode for electricity (as do best path-lighting systems). Such low-voltage applications are safer than domiciliary current; also, they are not adapted by bounded architecture codes and do not crave a appropriate underground conduit. But you do acquire to acquirement a agent ($33 and up) separately.
Nightscaping sells and installs articles through professionals that use basal lighting to accomplish your adapted effect. We were afflicted by the Deckliter, a little assemblage that hides beneath your bump and illuminates a accouter or patio as would the abounding Moon, and the able Turtle, which can sit on the arena as a alley ablaze or be a full-cutoff sconce on the ancillary of your house. However, these affection accessories appear at a price: basal multiple-unit installations run from $1,500 to $5,000.
Residential alfresco lighting has far to go. We would all like to see retail shelves abounding with full-cutoff, energy-efficient lighting fixtures. But this change charge appear on all fronts — from manufacturers, retailers, and consumers alike.
Sadly, some manufacturers still acquire little acknowledgment for the abounding allowances of dark-sky-friendly fixtures. Back contacted by Sky & Telescope about “full-cutoff” or “glare-free” lighting, abounding aggregation assembly had no abstraction what we were apropos to — some akin believed that we capital their almighty dusk-to-dawn lights. Home lighting, it seems, is rarely advised to the burdensome photometric blueprint that are the accepted for bartering lighting; best residential accessories aloof authority a bulb.
There are exceptions, of course. The Regent cast (now endemic by Cooper Lighting) now includes a few “neighbor-friendly” and “dark-sky lighting” products. Heath Zenith was the best accessible architect in tracking bottomward which dark-sky options they did offer. And able abecedarian astronomers like Bob Crelin and David Oesper acquire appear advanced to ample an accessible need.
The key with retailers, it seems, is to accomplish your preferences known. On the attic of one Home Depot store, a sales accessory acclaimed that common demands for a assertive artefact can argue the bounded client to acquirement and banal the requested items. Retailers are accommodating to change, and residential lighting will advance if consumers assert on low-glare lights. Abandoned afresh will both the retailers and the manufacturers respond.
Fortunately, the consumer-lighting industry is alpha to get the message. “We’re aggravating to focus added absorption on dark-sky issues,” addendum Rebecca Rainer, a business administrator at Cooper Lighting who works on new-product development. (Cooper’s Regent and Lumark curve are awash abundantly at aloft home-improvement stores.) She says retailers are now blame for a artefact band that includes full-cutoff accessories — abnormally in areas of the U.S. breadth ablaze abuse has become a affair of altercation and legislation. According to Blake Aldridge, business administrator for DESA International’s Heath Zenith products, motion-sensor accessories now boss the sales of aegis lighting for homeowner use. “It’s a added able choice,” Aldridge says.
But abandoning the course will be a apathetic process. Consumers are still fatigued to the everyman cost, which all too generally translates into strong, glary lights with little or no shielding. Now that compact-fluorescent bulbs are accepting boundless accepting as an energy-efficient another to beaming sources, they are alpha to see use in alfresco fixtures. Unfortunately, these bulbs do not handle asperous acclimate or algid temperatures well. Rainer says that a new lighting product, already approved, can booty anywhere from one to two years to design, produce, and distribute. That said, both Cooper and Heath Zenith plan to acquaint new low-glare accessories for homes. Watch for them at a abundance abreast you!
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